A 32-year-old man attacked four rookie police officers with an axe in the New York borough of Queen on Thursday afternoon. The assailant, Zale Thompson, swung his 18-inch axe, hitting officer Joseph Meeker, 24, in the arm, and then lunging at Officer Kenneth Healey, 25, striking him in the head.
The two uninjured officers drew their weapons and shot the axe-wielding man, killing him. A 29-year-old female bystander was struck by an errant bullet, but survived.
The four rookies were assigned to the 103rd police district. All four graduated from the police academy only three months ago.
The attack took place in Jamaica, Queens, on Jamaica Avenue near 162nd Street.
Thompson was discharged from the Navy due to misconduct, according to CNN. He also had a criminal record in California.
Two years ago Thompson converted to Islam and began using the name Zaim Farouq Abdul-malik.
ABC New York reported that the axe-attacker had “a long history filled with what sources describe as hate speech aimed at what he apparently saw as the white government power structure in America, suggesting it was time to rise up in opposition.”
Whether Abdul-Malik’s anger was directed at what he perceived to be a “white” controlled government or simply a non-Islamic one, is not yet clear..
New York police commissioner William Bratton said that the perpetrator’s online browsing history included organized terror groups, beheadings and the shooting in Canada last week. After initially demurring, Bratton said that what happened in Queens on Thursday was “a terrorist attack.”
As noted by The Jewish Press in an in-depth article over a year ago, and what North America has seen playing out recently, the “lone wolf” Islamist radical was launched very deliberately as a means of destabilizing western countries, as a step in the process towards conquest.
In an important article in National Review Online, former U.S. prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy pointed out how absurd it is for government and law enforcement officials to use the term “lone wolf attacks” as a way to suggest that they are not “real” terrorism. They are.
Both the New York City attack and the terrorist attacks in Canada last week took place after ISIS urged Muslims in the West to attack the soldiers and police officers of “the tyrants.”